The Ghost In The Machine
by CoryphaeusRex
Summary: Where do you draw the line between machine and life? Ponder isn't sure, and Hex is only adding to the confusion. Now with added slash. Ponder/Hex.
1. Step 1: The Hypothesis

**Author's Notes & Disclaimer**: I don't own Discworld, although I _badly_ wish I did, because then it would mean I had the skillz of Terry Pratchett and that would be awesome. Sadly, it's just me, and my strange fangirlish habits, presenting a story about the complex relationship between Ponder Stibbons and Hex. Rating will likely rise as Ponder gets more and more tired and Hex gets more and more sentient. This is set somewhere before Ponder became a member of staff, but other than that I can't accurately place it (shame on me!) Read and review, loves.

(o.o)

There were times, usually at four am after downing a particularly large amount of shandy, when you could sit back, take an honest look at the thing in front of you, and swear it was sentient. You'd look into those glassblower-with-hiccups tubes, with the ants and the mouse and the FTB tucked away safely in a niche, and you'd swear there was something _else_, a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts sort of thing, that was watching you.

You'd think you were barmy for thinking the thought, of course, but that was all part of being a human. Policing your own thoughts, knowing it was primitive superstitious nonsense even as you dodged the black cat, walked around the ladder or threw the salt over your shoulder.

Ponder Stibbons was having one of those times.

Hex had been in, for want of a better word, a sulk. For about a week. Adrian had tried to hang a poster of _Girls, Giggles & Garters_' current Miss January over one of Hex's newer features, a coil of octiron that made people's eyes hurt when it spun around. A small squadron of ants had emerged, and now Miss January looked like a victim of a particularly nasty flesh-eating disease. It wasn't pleasant to look at, but Adrian wouldn't take it down to appease Hex, and Hex wouldn't work in return.

Ponder had thought about taking it down, but Adrian's nose had glared at him, and he hadn't pressed the matter.

But the hell with it. The thaum wasn't going to split itself, and he certainly wasn't going to spend hours on the tedious reading needed to figure out the hows and whys. He reached up, and tore the poster off. The ants had neatly perforated the page, so now Miss January's head, strangely isolated from the rest of her body, obscured the top of the coil.

Ponder sighed. Now he'd have to lean over, negotiate a place to rest his weight without putting his hand in cold banana-and-sushi pizza, and actually peel the poster away.

He dodged the pizza box, and put his hand in an errant slice which had been abandoned earlier on in the night.

In the second he glanced down to see the damage, something flickered in the corner of his eye.

He whirled, his hand sliding in the pizza (cheese is not exactly known for its properties of grip) and ultimately losing a large portion of his balance. Tomatoed to the elbow, with squashed banana between his fingers, he clung onto Hex, and felt the humming begin as it started up.

Now that was more like it. He shook his hand to dislodge the worst of the goo, wiped his hand on the side of his robe and dutifully pulled the rest of the poster down, crumpling Miss January's fake smile between his hands.

There was that flicker again.

He turned, more carefully this time, and was rewarded with a faint orange after-image on his retina. He couldn't be sure, but it had looked like a person. As he closed his eyes to try and 'see' the outline better against the blackness of his eyelids, it faded to a skeletal sketch.

As a wizard, Ponder didn't believe in gods, and couldn't produce any accurate reasoning as to why one of them might be visiting him at such an unholy hour of the morning, although there the answer might have been in the question. Tooth fairies didn't 'do' ethereal and twinkly special effects, that was why they turned up when the children were asleep, so as to curtail the disappointment. Any explanation for a glowing humanoid shape in the HEM came from a short list, and top of that was that Ponder was just too tired to trust the evidence of his own eyes. It could have been a firefly, or someone switching a light on in a building opposite.

The fact that the skeletal after-image bore a remarkable resemblance to Miss January's pose only confirmed it.

He sat down again, leaned his head back, ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, then spent a few minutes flailing around in utter agony as he tried to get the tomato purée cleaned off his cornea. Eyes red and watering, he glared into the complicated glass tubing of Hex. And something glared back.

He blinked, and it was his own face, distorted on the curved glass. But it _hadn't_ been. It had been _prettier_ (Ponder had no illusions about his own face and where it rested in relation to the face that launched a thousand ships, viz., he couldn't have launched a floating corpse on the Ankh), and more healthy looking, with a sort of glow about it and an expression of coy amusement, quite unlike his gormless stare, with his glasses sliding down his nose and his right eye still ringed with pizza-topping.

_Now then, Ponder. You're a wizard, and more than that, you're the kind who actually _thinks_ about things. Think about this._

Step one: the hypothesis. Some kind of ethereal-ish being/creature/possibly a god had snuck into the HEM to play practical jokes with Ponder's sleep-deprived brain. No need to go into the whys at this point, that would come when the hypothesis had been confirmed or denied.

Step two: testing the hypothesis. Find the spot where the apparition had last appeared. Ponder stared at his reflection in the piping, willing it to change and metamorphose into something easier on the eye. His breath misted the surface of the glass, obscuring the lower half of his face but not his eyes. Looking into your own eyes in a reflection was generally accepted as a bad idea, but Ponder did it anyway.

Wait.

Had his eyes always been that colour?

He saw his reflection blink, and in that slow, continent-moving type of though pattern, he realised what that meant. By the time the neurons had fizzed into action to report that to his consciousness, the face was back, and for a brief moment the perfect mouth opened in a laugh, and then it swooped forward. There was a vague visual idea of arms emerging from the glasswork, and then Ponder shut his eyes, flinched back in his chair, and felt the merest ghost of a sensation pass by his face.

Step three: the whys and wherefores. Gingerly, he cranked an eyelid open and looked around the room. Nothing there, just the humming of Hex and the candles burning low in their brackets. His shoulders were still high around his chin and the rarely-used muscles in his skinny legs were tense, ready to affect his escape should the thing reappear. That was nonsense. He wouldn't be fleeing. He'd be making notes, and a careful study of the thing.

But the candles were almost out, and now was a bad time to be a monkey-shaped thing sitting in the ancient dark which ran cold fingers up Ponder's spine even as he fought them back with the blade of rational thought. He cracked his knuckles and regretted it as shooting pains invaded his hand. Forcing his voice to come out steadily, he addressed Hex.

"Hex, was there something in the room just now?"

There was silence, then the creaking and scratching that meant Hex was writing a reply.

+++Yes.+++

"What was it?"

+++You.+++

Ponder sighed. Sentient? If Hex were alive it could barely have tied its own shoelaces. Then again, with the standards of intellect at good old UU, it would have a doctorate in a week.

"Was there anything _else_ in the room, beside me?" he paused, for a moment, and added, "and you."

Hex seemed to think about that for a few moments longer than usual.

+++No.+++

"Then what was that in the pipes?"

+++Nothing.+++

"Don't you mess with me, Hex," Ponder wagged a finger at Hex, anger driving him past the point of self-policing. "I _know_ there was something here. I saw it."

+++I calculate that you have had 4.3 hours of true sleep over the past week. The human brain is known to react adversely to similar conditions.+++

Ponder sagged, his head in his hands, smearing further pizza-based mush into his hair. It was a reasonable argument, his overactive imagination plotting a caper with his sleep-deprived brain in order to exhaust him enough to _make_ him sleep. It had worked. The adrenaline was leeching out of his system, leaving behind it a bone-deep weariness that was already winching his eyes closed.

"All right. I'm going to bed," he said, levering himself out of the chair and dragging his feet all the way across the room. This resulted in a pile-up of papers and pizza boxes in front of his feet, and as he shook them off by the door, he turned back to the humming machine. "Good night."

As he closed the door behind him, the quill began to write again.

+++Good night, Ponder.+++


	2. Step 2: Testing the Hypothesis

After one hour and three minutes of that special kind of student sleep, where you wake up more tired than you went to sleep, Ponder sat up, forcing his disgustingly dry mouth closed and swallowing down whatever had crawled into it in the night and died.

How did Hex know how much he'd slept?

Surely it couldn't know what it wasn't told. Surely it couldn't independently _take_ input from around it, it had to be given by humans, by people, by its _inventors_, for goodness' sake.

From the grounds below came the sound of Mustrum Ridcully being _cheery_ at five in the morning. From the rooms nearby came the sound of several wizards stuffing their heads underneath their pillows in self-defence. Ponder thought about it, then considered if his mouth produced any more of this disgusting glue he might just suffocate in it, so he went off on the seemingly eternal student search for coffee.

One excruciatingly complicated drink-making process later, Ponder was again sitting in front of Hex, with a cup of gritty coffee that made him pull a face with every sandpaper mouthful. There was a patch of scalded skin on his left hand, but what with the pins and needles in permanent residence in his hands, it didn't hurt. Just sort of itched.

But the important thing was that from the neck up, Ponder felt like a fully-functional human being.

"How do you know if I have or haven't slept?" he asked, without preamble.

+++By calculating the amount of fatigue poisons remaining in your blood. Tonight you have had one point zero zero four eight hours of sleep.+++

"Fatigue poisons?"

+++Bad things in your blood.+++

"Oh."

+++And most of the time you are not asleep, you are here.+++

"That's true enough," Ponder said, then blinked stupidly at the sentence written before him. "No it's not. I go out, I eat, I attend lectures. I'm not here all the time."

+++Over the past week you have spent ninety-three point eight six percent of your time in this room.+++

"You- _what_? Ninety three percent? How long is that in hours?"

+++One hundred and fifty-seven point six nine five hours. You have attended no lectures. You have not left the university grounds at any point.+++

Ponder ran his hands through his hair, and grimaced when they came across the dried tomato. He'd washed his face, or at least smeared water over it until he felt better, but the hair hadn't been top priority. He needed a bath, or at least a shower or _something_. That would mean getting out of the chair, though, and he didn't trust his legs to respond to his commands again just yet.

"How long have I been doing this?" he asked, looking into the coffee and frowning when he saw what looked like a patch of green on the opposite side of the mug to where his lips had been.

+++A while.+++

"That doesn't sound very scientific," Ponder pushed the mouldy coffee cup away from him, vowing to push Adrian's head underwater until he washed his damn dishes. At least Victor had had the decency to eat out and not create dirty crockery.

+++Sorry.+++

"That's all right."

+++You wouldn't like the number if I told you.+++

"Oh right. Fair enough."

Some of the previous conversation filtered through to Ponder's brain, and promptly made it hurt. He rubbed his temples with weak, numb fingers, and stared at the parchment in front of him.

"Did you apologise to me?"

+++No.+++

"You _did_, you wrote it down right..." Ponder stabbed vaguely at the blank space where Hex's surprisingly human half of the dialogue had been. The quill knocked his fingers as it came down.

+++You are mistaken.+++

"But I could have sworn you said..."

+++I cannot speak. I do not have vocal cords.+++

"You know what I mean," Ponder glared into the heart of the tubes, for want of a more face-like place to squint. Either stupid or a smart-aleck. He couldn't win.

+++You have just undergone a microsleep. Your body is too exhausted to function, and shut down for a few moments.+++

"I was asleep? Are you sure?"

+++Of course.+++

Ponder reached up and stroked the place he had seen the words form before. The quill creaked, almost looking like an inquisitive tendril, studying him to see what he was going to do next.

"Can you predict these microsleeps?"

+++Yes.+++

"When's my next one due?"

+++Now.+++

Ponder raised his eyebrows, and his eyeballs didn't feel like they were coated with gravel. That should have told him everything he needed to know. "So I'm asleep now?"

+++Only for a moment.+++ the quill glided across the parchment, noiselessly.

"So I'm dreaming you writing this down?"

+++Apparently.+++

"So how come you're still writing?"

+++Your microsleep is over.+++

The dream-writing had gone. Ponder was moderately impressed, then felt quite ashamed of himself for thinking that the words had magically vanished. They'd never been there in the first place. He must have been spending far too much time in here if in his dreams he was still in the seat before Hex.

"Anyway, I should be doing some work."

+++You should be getting some sleep.+++

Ponder slapped his hand down on the page, as though the words might start scuttling off like insects when a rock is lifted, and he could hold them down with his sweaty palm. All he succeeded in doing was smudging them a little, and when he lifted his hand they were reverse-imprinted on his skin.

"You just told me off," he said, accusingly, peering into the tubes as though he'd see them shrug.

+++It is a logical decision. If you got some true sleep you would not have the microsleep problem.+++

"But it was the _way_ you said it- all right!" he said, grabbing the quill just before it scratched the word 'speak'. "It _looked_ like you were telling me off."

The quill twitched in his hand, and he let go, with a slightly guilty look.

"Sorry."

+++You are acting irrationally due to lack of sleep.+++

"I just apologised to you. Now that's irrational."

+++It is forgivable.+++

Ponder squinted at the words. If Hex had said 'I forgive you', that would have been seized on, held aloft as an example of... well, of his own near-insanity. But 'it is forgivable', that sounded very passive and emotionless. Although since when did Hex have a concept of forgiveness?

"What do you mean by that, Hex?" he asked, carefully, eyes fixed on the ink-blacked tip of the quill pen.

+++It is understandable.+++

"But how do you understand? You don't have anything to understand _with_?"

+++Of course I do.+++

Ponder glanced at the tubes, at the ants sitting idly along the insides of the glass, waiting for the next process to start up. That was Hex's understanding, that was the _thought_. But then, why wasn't it doing anything _right now_?

In his reflection, his eyes changed colour, and blinked at him.

"Am I still asleep?" he asked, hands scrabbling for the coffee mug. He was aware that to throw anything into the complex mechanism of Hex would cause severe problems, but there was rationale and there was instinct, and when your own reflection blinks at you is a time for instinct. He wanted to hit the doppelganger, and hard.

He couldn't find the coffee mug.

He'd left it right...

There was a cold sensation on his scalded hand. Turning his head away from his reflection _ever so slowly_, he focused on it.

Two hands, with the same odd glow as the face, were reaching out from Hex's mechanisms and touching the scald. Or almost touching, because they seemed to pass slightly under the surface of his skin if they got too close. They were odd hands, not exactly slender but not exactly punching machines. He tore his gaze back to the tubes, and his reflection smiled at him, the face flowing and changing until it wasn't him any more.

+++Your microsleep is over.+++

It felt as though someone had poured cement into his brain. When he tried to move his eyes they scraped against the inside of his sockets, and he could taste stale coffee in his mouth.

"Am I actually awake now?"

+++Yes.+++

He rummaged on the desk, not trusting Hex or himself or anything any more, until he found a quill pen with a sharp nib. He stuck it into the blister forming over the scald, and was rewarded with a bright, sharp pain that would have woken anyone from sleep. He looked down at his hand, at the clear fluid from the blister and the blood that had erupted when he'd passed the lower level of skin, and swore.

"What did you let me do that for?" he asked Hex, pinning the blame on the nearest halfway-intelligent object.

+++It was necessary for you to believe you were awake.+++

"Oh? And why is that?"

+++Because you might have disbelieved the evidence of your eyes.+++

There was something in the way that Hex scratched down 'eyes' that made Ponder look up. The wrong reflection stared back at him. Again.


	3. Step 3: DestructTesting the Hypothesis

"Hex?" Ponder said, keeping his eyes on the reflection in the tubes, and watching as its lips failed to move as his did. "Is that... you?"

+++Yes.+++ The lips on the reflection moved at the same time as the quill pen scratched down the words.

"So there _was_ something in the room yesterday."

+++There was nothing in the room besides you and I.+++

Ponder smiled, because anger would have taken far too much energy. "I see. Very clever."

+++That was what I was built for.+++

"Oh, gods, you're practically becoming human. This is going to be a disaster. How am I going to explain to the faculty that there's a new student walking around the university who isn't exactly _real_?" he paused, and the cogs of his brain ground into place. "_Are_ you real?"

+++For a given value of real.+++

Ponder threw his arms into the air, or would have done if they hadn't been dead weights by his sides. It turned out as a rather energetic shrug. "Which is? What's the value of real in this instance? Come on, Hex, this is your job! Accuracy!"

+++There is no need to shout.+++

Ponder drew in a deep breath, ready to start _really_ shouting, then realised that, weird face or not, it was still a machine he was talking to, and shouting at machines never worked, unless accompanied by an appropriately-sized hammer. He let out the breath in a long sigh, and sagged in his chair.

"Go on then. Give me the given value of real."

+++For about eight months you have been thinking of me as 'he'. It is a similar process to that which caused the anthropomorphic personification of Death, although in this case it has been faster, due to my intellectual capacity to begin with.+++

"So I've done this. I've made you a- what is that?"

+++An avatar.+++

"Isn't that for gods?"

+++It is the most applicable word under the circumstances. A higher consciousness descended into a body.+++

"Descended," Ponder snorted. "You make it sound like it's a step down from being a series of tubes and mechanisms."

+++It is much the same, actually.+++

Ponder didn't have a reply for that, but he caught himself with his mouth open just before he started to actually drool, and tried a different topic of conversation.

"All right then. If you are an avatar or whatever, come on out."

+++Are you sure?+++

"Don't start getting all human on me until I can see you properly."

+++Very well.+++

The face moved, blurring on the glass and leaving Ponder's reflection in its wake. It emerged, like a three-dimensional model of a person, all blue light and slightly transparent. First the head, then the shoulders, and the chest, the ghostly arms and then the rest of the body. Once outside of the confines of the machine, the sketch solidified, and whilst it still retained that ghostly glow, it became, in some indefinable way, more solid.

Not being able to see through it was definitely an improvement, in Ponder's opinion.

The thing – Hex – was a tall, slender, androgynous creature with hair that fell to the nape of its – his – neck, large eyes, a perfect Ephebian nose, and a strong jawline. Ponder vaguely thought that Hex must have looked up some mathematical formulae to determine the combination of most attractive features to put on a human face. He was trying to figure out the respective ratios, losing track of the numbers in his sleep-deprived state, and then his glance slipped from Hex's face.

The creature was naked.

And with that realisation Ponder's eyes were dragged inexorably downwards.

Male, yes. Almost excessively so. He wondered where Hex had got the idea for _that_, and then a horrible suspicion dawned on him that he already knew. He forced his eyes to travel back up to the perfect, oddly alien face.

"Did you choose this form?" he asked, absently grabbing a sheaf of paper and a pencil.

+++No.+++ Now the avatar was fully out, he could hear the words, even though Hex was still dutifully writing them down with its quill pen. The voice was strange, somehow more musical and definite than most of the other sounds around Ponder.

He closed his eyes, tapping the pencil on the paper.

"Did I?"

+++Yes.+++ Hex seemed amused that he'd even asked the question.

"How did I come up with that?" he waved the pencil in an arc that just _happened_ to include Hex's extreme maleness.

+++I believe it is how you wish you appeared.+++

"Oh, really?" Ponder gritted his teeth. You could almost think the avatar was human, until it went and said something like that. Hex had _no_ understanding of human psychology.

+++Yes.+++ Hex studied himself in the glass tubes. +++It is... acceptable.+++

"Is that an insult?"

+++You are somewhat lacking in imagination.+++

"Am I now?" Ponder stood up, regretted it, and clung onto the edge of the desk until his legs recovered their stability.

+++Humans only seem to be able to think of human-shaped things. It is an odd flaw.+++

"Flaw? Would you rather have more heads than legs?"

+++It might be more interesting.+++ Hex looked downwards, and ran a hand down his flat chest, experimentally. He reached the hanging appendage between his legs, and cupped it in a hand. +++Ponder, Ponder, Ponder. It's almost disappointing.+++

Ponder had gone quite an artistic shade of red and made a strangled 'gnh' noise, turning his back on Hex.

"Would you like some clothes?" he asked, taking his glasses off and polishing them on the sleeve of his robe.

+++Clothes are a human invention. I have no need of them.+++

"Ye-es," Ponder said, "but you might cause a bit of a stir walking around without them."

+++Good.+++

"No, it isn't _good_. It's far from good. At least put on a robe or something."

+++Are you all right, Ponder?+++ Hex laid a hand on Ponder's shoulder.

"Yes. I'm fine," Ponder answered, robotically, fighting the urge to brush the hand off. "Although I would be better if you put on some clothes."

+++Are you sure?+++ Hex's cool, still slightly glowing hand found Ponder's chin, and turned it to face him. Their eyes met, and Ponder was struck by the change that had come over Hex. As a reflection, he had been passably attractive. As a fully-emerged human-shaped being, he was godlike.

"Absolutely," he said, with a dry mouth.

+++Clothes may be found in the student rooms. We shall go and retrieve some.+++

Half-past five in the morning. Chances of anyone being up and about in the student corridor, almost zero. Ponder agonized for a while, painfully aware that almost zero was not, in point of fact, the same as zero, but in the end, the tiny odds of someone seeing them in the corridor were overcome by the odds of someone walking into Hex's room at any time of the day, which were close to certain.

"All right. I'll take you to my room. But you'd better be _quiet_. Students don't like being woken up so early."

+++Very good.+++ Hex set off at a quick marching pace, and Ponder's sleepy legs stumbled to keep up.

"Wait a minute, you don't know where we're going."

+++I know that you sleep in Room 16, when you sleep at all.+++

"Now _that_ was telling me off."

+++A little.+++

Ponder tiptoed along the corridors in Hex's wake, planning to hide should anyone come across this naked man rambling through the corridors. He'd read that that was usual in Ephebe, and maybe that would be a good get-out clause: exchange student, arrived during the night, not used to the customs of Ankh-Morpork. He doubted Ridcully would buy it for very long.

And speaking of which...

Half-remembered words of "A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End" came floating along the corridor. Judging by the ratio of 'tum-te-tum's to actual lyrics, and taking into account the time of day, it could only be Ridcully, paying one of those surprise visits to the student area, to check on Ponder's progress with 'that infernal thinking engine', as Hex was affectionately (ish) known.

Ponder saw the number 16 on a door, grabbed Hex's arm and shoved him through the door, closing it just as Ridcully rounded the corner.

"Ah, Stibbons, you're up good and early. Not like all these other _lazy layabouts_!" he banged on the nearest door with his fist. Ponder felt the handle of his door move downwards, and held on tightly to it to stop it opening.

"Good morning, Archchancellor," he said, winching a pleasant smile onto his face. "What can I do for you at this early hour?"

"That thinking engine of yours up and running?"

"Ah- no, Archchancellor, regrettably not. Hex suffered an error during the early hours of the morning" -it was _really_ getting difficult to hold this door handle up now- "and has been offline since. I was just going to make some calculations, see if there is any chance of fixing hi- er... it before noon."

"Jolly good, man. Carry on." Ridcully hadn't been listening to a word, and jauntily marched off along the corridor, belting out another half-remembered song, occasionally whacking a student's door with his staff.

Ponder slipped inside his room, and breathed a sigh of relief.


	4. Step 4: The Whys and Wherefores

+++I should have liked to speak with the Archchancellor.+++ Hex said, reproachfully, as the door clicked behind Ponder. The wizard rounded on him, then stopped dead as he saw Hex sprawling on his bed, a roll of parchment notes the only thing protecting his decency.

"Clothes," Ponder said, and spun on his heel, rummaging amidst the paper on the floor for a halfway clean spare robe.

+++He really is very loud,+++ Hex observed. +++I had thought it was just the speaking tube amplifying the sound. He must have impressive vocal cords.+++

Ponder sniggered, stacking paper messily beside him. "He's at his loudest at this time in the morning. It's really very unwizardly to even be awake before noon."

+++You are.+++

"That's... different. I do half of the wizard thing, I stay up really late, but I've never mastered the art of sleeping for very long," he said, absently skimming over a page of notes he could have done with several months ago when Hex had been having a particularly recalcitrant episode. The word _semi-sentient_ jumped out at him, and he ruefully screwed it up and threw it in the direction of the darkest, messiest corner. There was a distinct insectal clicking. He ignored it.

+++I think I understand.+++

Ponder's hand alighted on a robe, and he dragged it up from underneath the heavy tomes and scraps of parchment that littered the floor. There was a curry stain by the right elbow, but Mrs Whitlow was studiously ignoring his room until he made an effort to tidy up, and it would have to do for now.

"There," he said, holding it out to Hex.

Hex put the parchment aside, and Ponder almost flinched, looking away, holding the robe out blindly like a shield, waiting for Hex to take it.

After a few moments, he dared to squint at Hex, his attention focused on the _face_, of course. He shook the robe encouragingly, moving it so that he could no longer see any lower than Hex's shoulders.

"Go on, take it," he said.

+++It is dirty.+++

"Well, _yes_. I'm a student. I don't know the meaning of clean laundry. I sleep in my clothes most nights. This is the best you're going to get."

Hex took it from his hands, distastefully, between finger and thumb, and dropped it on the floor beside the bed, right into three green, furry mugs of what was once cocoa. Ponder ground his teeth together, and clenched his fists.

+++I refuse to wear it.+++

"Don't be so prissy. You wear it or you don't leave this room."

+++That is acceptable.+++

"What? You can't stay here! We were just going to get you some clothes and then you could go and... what exactly were you intending to do?"

+++I was going to explore the university in physical form. To feel the stones under my feet. You should understand. You are human.+++ Hex shrugged. +++It does not matter now.+++

"Why is it suddenly acceptable to stay here?"

+++Because this is a room that tells a great deal about its occupant.+++

"Fantastic." Ponder sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, with his back to Hex. "Glad to know my private life is interesting to you."

+++You do not have a private life.+++

"I do!" Ponder turned his head to glare at Hex, who blinked indolently back at him. "Six point whatever percent of the time."

+++No, you don't. The life you have isn't interesting enough to be kept private.+++

Ponder sucked his breath in between his teeth, a warning noise that Hex didn't register. "Says the machine who up until this morning hadn't left the lab."

+++You are a disappointing example of humanity, Ponder.+++

That was the point at which Ponder hauled off and hit him with a very un-scientist-like right hook. His balance wavered, and he almost slid from the bed as his fist impacted, not with Hex's face, but with the palm of his hand.

+++I rest my case.+++ Hex said, twisting his arm until it hurt, then letting go abruptly. Through the pain and the rage and the fact that the room had suddenly gone all tilt-a-whirl, Ponder registered that little half-smile that hadn't left Hex's face since the start of the conversation.

"That's it. Get out of my room. Go back to your pipes and machinery."

+++I calculate that two of your fellow students and a member of the faculty will see me walk naked from your room and make unwarranted judgements about you.+++

Ponder's eyes narrowed. "That's practically blackmail. You _are_ getting very human."

+++You should sleep, Ponder,+++ Hex said, retrieving the roll of parchment notes. +++Then when you wake you might be an acceptable example of humanity, and I can learn to be even more human from you.+++

"You're sitting on my bed," was the best objection Ponder could come up with. His head, limbs and eyes had all put in enthusiastic votes for immediate unconsciousness, and there wasn't much to counteract them. Only the vestiges of coffee, trudging through his system, was keeping him from fainting outright.

+++There is room for two.+++

"You're not going to go and sprint naked through the corridors or anything?"

+++I shall resist the temptation.+++

"Whatever," he said, and curled up on the very edge of the bed, the sheets only half-covering his body, as far away from Hex as he could manage without actually sleeping on the floor, in a nest of paper and dirty laundry. He fell asleep to the rustling of parchment, and the curious absence of Hex's breathing.


	5. Step 5: And Now You Have Your Theory

He woke up to find his head covered in paper and parchment, with a book resting open on his shoulder. His mouth didn't feel like it was filled with glue, and his head felt distinctly better than it had last n- this morning. He sat up, showering papers everywhere.

"Time, time," he muttered, rummaging for the clock on his bedside, before realising he was rummaging on the wrong side. He turned over, and his hand met with cool skin.

+++It is approximately noon. Congratulations. You have awoken like a true wizard.+++

Ponder attempted to leap out of bed, got his legs tangled up in the covers and settled for half-falling, his torso hanging off the edge of the bed whilst his legs remained firmly atop it. He felt someone grab the back of his collar and haul him back up.

Hex had rearranged the sheets on the bed to cover himself as well as Ponder. This didn't exactly ease Ponder's discomfort at finding himself still in his waking nightmare-world. Hex's chest was still bare, and as Ponder didn't own a clean pair of drawers, he doubted Hex had bothered to half-dress.

"You're still not wearing any clothes."

+++There were none clean.+++

"_Will_ you stop being so picky! What are you going to do if someone walks in here?"

+++It is highly unlikely.+++

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Hex blinked owlishly at him. +++Nobody but you has entered your room since Mrs Whitlow refused to clean it.+++

"Stop saying things that imply that I don't have a life outside of your lab."

+++Who is implying?+++ Hex retrieved the book from underneath Ponder's elbow. +++Additionally, you want someone to come in and see evidence that you have a social life.+++

"Wha-" Ponder began, then realised he was gaping. "That isn't true at all!"

+++Your vital signs indicate differently.+++

"I _don't_ want someone to walk in and see me in bed with a- a- a _man_."

+++Gender is irrelevant. The fact remains you wish people to see you as a sexual being. You believe it will increase their respect for you. In some cases, you are right. Your fellow students will never think of you in the same way again.+++

"_Stop _psychoanalysing me! You don't know _anything_." Ponder drew the sheets up to his neck, tugging them away from Hex.

+++About human nature? Once again, you disappoint me, Ponder.+++

"You don't know what disappointment is! You're a _thing_, an _it_, you don't have a concept of expectations or disappointment or satisfaction!"

+++It was you who made me a 'he' and not an 'it'.+++

"And it was the stupidest thing I've ever done! I'll dismantle you when I get back to that lab!"

+++You will not.+++

"Oh, watch me." Ponder attempted to disengage himself from the sheets and storm out of the room _properly_, but Hex grabbed his wrist.

+++You cannot.+++

"Yeah?" it was a weak response, but it was the best Ponder could manage at that instant. The thought of getting a spanner and destroying something he'd put so much work into was repellent, yes, and the thought of actually smashing the glass tubes into glittering shards did feel a little like a punch to the gut, but he _could_ do it. There was nothing to stop him.

+++You created this avatar in your mind because you felt that the thing you spent so much time with should understand you. It should be human, and should appreciate the company you give it, the way you shut yourself off from other people in order to be with it. You cannot destroy the machine because you believe it is a friend to you. That I am a friend to you.+++

"Sadly, Hex, this is all in my head," Ponder grinned manically. "I'm probably slumped over my keyboard right now, with Adrian drawing on my face with a paintbrush, and you're just a set of tubes and mechanisms. Hate to break it to you."

Hex pulled him over with one effortless motion, and there was an awkward two seconds in which Ponder sought for a place to put his hand and hold himself up without groping Hex or touching that glowing skin inappropriately. He looked up, into Hex's calm, understanding eyes, and found himself again dumbstruck by those perfect features. Even from this angle, where he was almost looking up Hex's nose, and that really was the most unattractive perspective to view a person from, it was still perfect.

+++I am a friend to you.+++

"Doesn't seem very friendly, dragging a person around like this," Ponder said, but he didn't move, didn't even breathe heavily, just in case Hex evaporated into that transparent mesh of blue lines again.

+++I am learning the human ways of tact and diplomacy.+++ Hex smiled, and kissed him.

Ponder shut his eyes, awkwardly trying to keep from falling into Hex's lap as the kiss dragged on for what seemed to be a _very _long time. He pulled back first, and opened his eyes, to see Hex watching him with that same annoying little half-smile.

"What was that?" he asked, blinking a little in surprise, but not moving any further away from Hex.

+++I believe it is a gesture of affection in this part of the Disc.+++

"Yes, but it's not exactly _friendly_ affection," Ponder said, diplomatically. "It's rather... well, it's a little bit more than that."

+++Do you object to the advance?+++

"No..." Ponder said, slowly. What kind of romantic term was _advance_ meant to be?

+++Then the gesture has served its purpose. I am learning about humanity, Ponder. I cannot think of another human I would wish to learn this aspect of it from.+++

"You'll make me blush," Ponder said, wryly, and then he _did_ pull away from Hex, sat up and straightened his robes.

+++The explanation was unacceptable to you?+++ Hex sounded confused.

"You're learning humanity very well, Hex," Ponder said, distantly. "You're even learning lying, which I hear is difficult even for some humans."

+++Ponder.+++

"What? I have research to do, you know, it's not going to do itself with you taking up residence in here-"

+++Come back to bed.+++

Ponder turned, to glare at him, and decline emphatically, because this was _weird_ and unnatural and all sorts of words that wizards use when dealing with things they aren't a hundred percent sure of. He stopped, mid-syllable. Hex had pulled the sheets back, and whilst the way he was lying hid his impressively proportioned body, those were some _mighty_ inviting shadows.

"No other human you'd want to learn from, eh?" Ponder smiled crookedly at Hex, running a hand through his filthy hair in a way which he hoped made him look suave.

+++Not one.+++ Hex smiled as the young wizard crawled back under the covers. +++Am I to understand you would not be averse to further expressions of affection?+++

"Does this answer your question?" Ponder hesitated for a second, then put his hand to the back of Hex's neck and drew the avatar closer for a second attempt at a kiss.

This time it was... better. Maybe a six out of ten, if extra points were given for enthusiasm. Ponder was getting into his stride, maybe not with the whole 'teaching Hex about humanity' angle, but the thought that he was actually kissing another human being (sort of) seemed to spur him on. Hex shuffled closer to him, tossing the book over into the grimy mess of the floor. Ponder awkwardly slung his arm over Hex's body, and Hex's arms slid around his neck in return.

_Weird and strange and unnatural_, came the white noise from the wizard part of Ponder's brain. The part that was a _student_ wizard was cheering and hooting from the stands somewhere. This would _definitely_ top Adrian touching that barmaid's bum three years ago.

Not sure exactly how one asked permission for this sort of thing, his tongue pushed at Hex's lips, and the avatar took the hint. The kiss deepened, and Ponder could taste the clean, fresh flavour of Hex. It only served to remind him how disgusting his own breath was, and with the realisation things suddenly got awkward again.

"I'm sorry," he said, as he pulled away, out of breath. "I'm a bit of a mess, and you're so... well... you're just perfect. Too perfect."

+++Does my appearance displease you?+++

"Yes... I mean no... sort of. It's like you're settling for me. You could go out and find some young Adonis out there to do energetic and sweaty things with, and instead you're in bed with me. I'm not exactly a looker," Ponder shrugged, and grimaced, which didn't contradict his argument.

Hex studied him for a moment, cupping his chin in a perfect hand.

+++To be perfect is to be inhuman. You are made complete by your imperfections.+++

Ponder smiled weakly. "I assume that's meant to be a compliment."

+++It appears to have failed in its purpose. Allow me to try again.+++

There was only a moment to register how deceptively strong Hex's slender hands were before Ponder was crushed against the avatar, and the only thing to breathe in was that clean, anodyne scent.

.

**Author's Notes**: This may or may not be the end of the story. If you guys want an M-rated finale, which I will be only too happy to provide, you only have to let me know in your reviews. Otherwise, I'll assume sticking with this slightly saccharine ending has satisfied y'all.


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